Often as historians we get immersed by the facts and numbers that one forgets about the emotional toll that is felt by those who were incarcerated and the effects on their families. This poem was in a publication that was accessioned as part of The Netherlands Institute of Southern Africa (NiZA) Collection (AL3293) by the SAHA archival team. This poem illustrates the anguish and pain in a way that no book can.

Within this periodical there was also included a list of deaths in detention in the preceding two years. The period 1960 to 1994 saw the systematic and extensive use of detention without trial in South Africa. Such detention was frequently conducive to the commission of gross abuses of human rights, including death.